Walker Art Gallery

The 130-year-old Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, which is known as the national gallery for the north, houses one of the UK’s largest art collections outside London. It is home to renaissance masterpieces, Tudor portraits and one of the best collections of Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite art in the country.

In addition to the gallery’s long-standing resident exhibitions, it also welcomes temporary or touring exhibitions each year. A major touring exhibition featuring a large collection of around 100 works by one of the most prominent artists of the Art Nouveau movement, Alphonse Mucha, was held at the gallery from 16 June to 29 October 2017. Ahead of the exhibition’s installation, we were called in to refresh the gallery space and redecorate it in just two weeks.

Project Delivery

During the project, which was completed on time ahead of the opening of the new exhibition, three operatives from our Liverpool office carried out all necessary pre-paint preparations and repainted all the woodwork in six rooms within the gallery building. The team also repainted the walls using two coats of standard emulsion.

The paint colours were carefully selected, in consultation with the gallery management team. The colour scheme was drawn entirely from the Dulux Heritage range of classic and timeless shades, to reflect both the heritage of the building itself and complement the beautiful Art Nouveau works of the exhibition at the same time. Pale neutral shades were used on the main wall areas along with a number of striking olive green feature walls to add a pop of colour.

The colour scheme was chosen specifically for the Mucha exhibition as was the Muraspec wide vinyl digital poster, which we hung on the walls above the dado rail in all the rooms.

The gallery had invested a huge amount into the Mucha exhibition and welcomed thousands of new visitors as a result so it was crucial for us to deliver a flawless, high-quality finish. As well as the short timeframe, we also had to work extremely carefully around the existing artwork and exhibitions at the gallery during the project, but this was certainly something which the team took in their stride.